They Come Back and Tell

Who’d be the christened, then?
The one boon of bringing forward ideas
Before their time is that it labels the shambles.

Forerunnership doesn’t pay, never has.
Combatants die in combat, where else? Bear
Better sticks to what his forebears always stuck to.

The forerunners’ front is not a social one
Nor has a man’s doggedness ever been any social.
Social life doesn’t flourish but in the rear with the gear.

Wise folk duck away, they are socially skilled—if
More than nine in ten braves fall in action, we must treat
The much wiser as the surviving kind of foolhardy harbingers.

November 23, 2011